


High Expectations

by Vespaer



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Ben Solo is a Mess, Ben is a pot farmer, F/M, Finn and Poe are married, Humboldt County CA, Leia is the Mayor, M/M, Pretty people with Problems in a Pretty Setting, Reuniting Family, Rey is a Christmas tree farmer, Reylo - Freeform, Star Wars AU, They own a general store and cafe, holiday fic, reylo au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-15
Updated: 2019-12-15
Packaged: 2021-02-26 04:48:41
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,439
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21807715
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Vespaer/pseuds/Vespaer
Summary: Times are tough in Northern California, and the local economy is stretched to its limit. But when a medical marijuana farmer moves in next door to Uncle Plutt's Greenhouse and Nursery, Rey is completely dismayed to find herself facing her first taste of true adversity. But has she really found, instead, what's been missing all of her life? Has she finally find true love? And can she reunite this mysterious man with his estranged mother in time for Christmas? Can they heal their wounds together?
Relationships: Leia Organa & Ben Solo, Leia Organa & Ben Solo | Kylo Ren, Leia Organa/Ben Solo, Leia Organa/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren, Poe Dameron & Finn, Poe Dameron/Finn, Rey & Ben Solo, Rey & Ben Solo | Kylo Ren, Rey/Ben Solo, Rey/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren
Comments: 1
Kudos: 6





	High Expectations

**High Expectations: Chapter One**

The thick soles of Rey's work boots were caked with chunky clots of mud, but they were nothing the floormats in her truck hadn't dealt with before in spades. She could slap them out later - it was the holiday season, and she had no time to be running low on organic whole grain wheat flour and pasture-raised, vegetarian-fed eggs. The cocoa was in the crock pot, the mulled cider was on the stove, and Uncle Plutt's Greenhouse and Nursery would be open for business in two hours. The cookies should already be in the oven and yet... here she was.

The word around the local watering hole was that the Mayor of Willow Creek was looking for her annual town hall Christmas tree, and that the competition was fierce.

But there was so much more to it than that. It was no mystery, times were hard. Public outlook around the mountains was bleak. It was getting tougher for families to dig deep and find the spirit of the season, not when so many were having to dig even deeper into their pockets to pay inflated costs for basic necessities. So far the acreage that Rey maintained had been spared the misfortune of others - she was in a valley, and the mountains around her spooned moisture from the prevailing winds off of the north Pacific and held them like a ladle. So many lives around her, though, so many... so many destroyed by merciless, ravenous wildfires. And none of them were safe from springtime threats like flash flooding or mudslides. Climate was a fickle bitch that way.

But the regional economy had been flipped on its head. Ordinarily scarcity paved the way for demand, she understood that much about economics, but... demand, lately, had become a very new and different thing, and it no longer contained luxury items like poinsettias, cinnamon pine cones, and freshly cut Christmas trees. Putting a prized white spruce in the front yard of town hall could be a matter of survival for a small operator like Rey.

So she had to have those damned cookies.

It would've been easier to take the highway but it also would've taken longer and time was of the essence, so she chose instead to navigate the rugged logging roads, which would deposit her onto the back doorstep of Dameron's General Store and Cafe. Having made her decision, she peeled off her gloves, still muddy from locking her hubs, then turned over the ignition and dropped it into four-wheel drive. She laid her phone and wallet in the passenger seat and gripped both hands onto the steering wheel before taking a deep breath and starting on her way.

Driving in this back country still filled her with a cocktail of different feelings. To start, she was a young female living alone in a still-mostly-untamed Humboldt County, California wilderness rumored to be rife with bears and cougars and pot fields and dead bodies and Netflix true crime docuseries. Even sasquatch. But at the same time, the nearby towns were warm and quaint, and the friends she'd made were just as quirky and weird as she was. There was a sense of community here - given the nature of their remote surroundings, people knew they had to rely on each other. It was just the way of things. People needed people here. Yet in spite of the relationships she'd managed to craft out of this spartan Klamath Mountain culture - in spite of the meager business that kept her lights on and put food on her table... she still spent her evenings at home feeling very wary and alone.

But boy, was there scenery. Oh, the scenery! So alien from what she was accustomed to, having lived the past several years in the scrubby, yellow, treeless deserts of southern Nevada. Northern California made that look like the surface of Mars. At times she had difficulty managing her allergies, but when she'd first come to Uncle Plutt's as an intern in college, she'd sworn then that she'd never seen so much green in all of her life, not even on the moors and misty sheep pastures of England, where she'd spent her childhood. A breathtaking, verdant panorama just rolled away on these hills and peaks, reaching up and out toward an endless horizon. Life here was split down the middle, comprised of equal parts splendor and majesty... and equal parts an exercise in caution. Nothing was to be taken for granted.

Which had made her a perfect candidate for such a life, really.

Rey had always been a cautious person, and largely self-sufficient. Everything she had was something she'd earned. She'd grown up an orphan with no next of kin, a ward of the state in an unfortunate system. She'd emancipated herself in her teens and gotten an early education on what real responsibility was like using government subsidized housing. She'd worked hard since she was young to earn a living and make good grades, sparing little time for friends or boys. And even though moving to America to go to college had set her up with a career that provided for her needs and gave her a happy life in a beautiful place, she was still buried in the leftover loan debt that her scholarships and multitudinous work hours wouldn't cover... and she had precious few fun memories to show for it.

She was ready for her life to begin. And knew it would someday... when the economy improved. If the climate would ever improve. So her budget could improve. But for now, she simply had to focus on keeping afloat. She'd made enough money on her fall pumpkin patch to hire a little help to get the leftover vines cleared and get the tractor serviced, and also enough to provide free cookies and hot drinks over the remainder of the holiday season. The rest, of course, was ramen noodles and peanut butter.

And tea. But not just any tea. This stuff was on special order, it was an import from home. This stuff was smoky and black with tobacco and bourbon notes, and a touch of bergamot and star anise. It was called Irish Whiskey Barrel and she took it hot every morning with milk and a dollop of homemade spiced honey. Sometimes in the summer, she took it iced with a splash of pineapple juice. But it was one of those little things that made life worth living, and she couldn't live without it.

And then there was Herbert.

Herbert was the prize. Herbert was the total culmination - the sum physical manifestation - of her whole baccalaureate degree. Herbert was the pride and the glory of her entire collegiate experience.

Herbert was a seven year old, eight foot tall Frasier fir, with firm, hardy branches and thick, stocky needles as plump as succulents. The tree was as fragrant as a fresh candle, and the cheeriest, most chipper shade of Christmas tree green Rey had ever seen - far livelier than any other tree on the lot. It's fat-bottomed, conical shape was perfectly symmetrical wrapping the whole way around its circumference, and nothing short of an artist's vision. The classical Christmas card ideal. Herbert was the loveliest tree in existence, and Rey's crowning achievement, having hand-reared it from a scrubby little sapling tied to a piece of rebar in a row along with all of it's siblings. She'd poured every ounce of her education into that tree, and was beyond proud of what it had become.

She couldn't peel her eyes away from the uppermost sprigs on its boughs as she passed it by, but was fortunate she turned to look when she did because she had to immediately slam on her brakes to avoid plowing over a giant, shaggy brown dog standing in the middle of the road, tongue lolling as he just stared at her.

She sat for a couple of seconds, knuckles turning white on her steering wheel, catching her breath while the dog leisurely plopped its butt down onto the ground to scratch behind its ear as if it had nowhere better to be than to sit and block the entire road.

And she was in a hurry.

Once she'd collected herself, assured that she hadn't inadvertently caused the death of a living being through an act of vehicular dog-slaughter, she unclicked her seat belt and hopped out of the truck to try to shoo the fluffy beast out of the road and out of harm's way.

"Hi there," she coaxed the dog gently, bent at the waist with her hands held out passively. She didn't have much experience with dogs, but this one seemed friendly even if he was big enough to provide ample transportation to a small child. When she reached him, he allowed her to pet him and get a closer look at the collar around his neck.

"Chew... bah..." she muttered aloud, reading the strange, foreign-sounding name written on the tag. "Chew... batcha? Chew... backa? Is this your name?"

The dog just smiled at her with a damp, dopey, wiry brown, floppy-eared grin. But then there was a rustling off to her right, behind the deeply grooved ditch that lined the road. And a voice.

"Chewie," it called.

Startled, Rey straightened with a gasp. She'd barely even heard the man approach - she could've been dead before she ever knew he was there. And what she saw when she turned toward him gave her little comfort. He was tall - intimidatingly so. His legs were long enough to outpace her. His broad shoulders framed an impressive spread of musculature, obscured beneath the loose drape of his long-sleeved flannel shirt. His boots were heavy, but his steps were silent as he emerged from behind a tree... where Rey could finally see the long, deadly, steely barrel of his twelve gauge, pump action shot gun.

And there they were. Deep in the forest.

Alone.

She'd been in the States long enough to know he wasn't taking that thing deer hunting. Ducks, maybe... but that didn't explain the bandana that smothered the lower half of his face beneath the shadow of the brim on his trucker hat. The only easily identifiable feature she could make out was his eyes.

His deep, warm, glassy brown eyes, the color of the spiced honey she dropped in her tea. The color of a warm cup, steaming in the sunshine by her kitchen window.

"Chewie," he stated again, softly but not enough to calm her. "C'mere."

"Y-you, uh..." she stammered, rubbing her clammy palms against her pant legs. "You live? Around here?"

He'd surprised her. She hadn't seen him before, and she thought she knew all of her neighbors. If one could call them that.

"You should be careful out here," he answered her without answering her question, reaching out for his dog's collar when the boy met his side. "These roads aren't safe. Do you have a gun?"

Was... that his clever way of finding out if she was armed? Did she look threatening? She was willing to bet, between the two of them, he most certainly had the upper hand.

"I'm Rey," she offered instead of the information he was digging after. If he could be subversive, then so could she. "We haven't met. You... are?"

"C'mon," he said to the dog once more before he turned again to disappear into the woods. "You should really consider just taking the highway," he called back at her before he wandered into the brush and was gone.

* * *

Rey was still stewing in her anger and indignation over the encounter she'd just had with that mysterious, armed barbarian, straight up to the very moment her tires rolled into the gravel lot behind Dameron's. She sat fuming to herself for a second or two just letting her engine idle, cursing the audacity of that asshole and wondering if she should contact the police. Those roads were her home! The only person who had ever made her feel unsafe out there was him! And... her own imagination, sometimes, at night. She was hypervigilant enough - the last thing she needed was a brand new crop of nightmares keeping her wide awake, full of shotgun-wielding serial rapists and murderers creeping around unseen in her back forty. Maybe she ought to consider getting a big dog like Chewb... Chewbahh... Chewie.

She turned the truck off just as a familiar black Subaru pulled in beside her. The Damerons would know what she should do about her unwelcome visitor, they'd been living in these parts a lot longer than she had.

Poe Dameron and his husband, Finn, had come to Northern California after they'd both served time in the war in Afghanistan. They hadn't known each other then, but met instead in a group therapy session for veterans battling PTSD. After what they'd described as a whirlwind romance, they came here to settle down and get married, and live a quiet life surrounded by the peace and serenity of nature.

Which, of course, was oftentimes anything but peaceful or serene.

But they were Rey's favorite people on the face of the earth, and truly her closest friends outside of the two girls, Rose and Kay, who owned the pottery painting studio across the highway. In spite of her ebbing anxiety, she pulled her face into a smile when Finn leaped out of the car's passenger seat.

"I am so sorry!" he immediately began, throwing his hands up in front of him.

"I... don't understand?" Rey replied in confusion as she stuffed her phone and wallet into her back pockets. "You're on time, I was the one who was early, but I wasn't waiting long. I -"

"No, no, no. He didn't mean to do it, he didn't know what he was doing..."

"It was an accident," Poe told her from across the roof of the car where he had leaned an elbow. "I got distracted and before I knew it, it was walking out the door. I would never have sold it if I'd taken two seconds to really look down and see what I was doing..."

"No..." Rey breathed. "You wouldn't..."

Her tea. He'd sold her tea. A cardinal sin - a capital offense against their friendship. An unforgivable betrayal.

"Poe! Oh..." she cried, rolling her head petulantly back onto her shoulders as she followed them into the shop. "How could you!"

"No one else ever buys the stuff," he answered, flipping on the lights while Finn crossed the floor to open the curtains and turn on the sign by the front door. "I just didn't pay attention."

"Oh he was paying attention alright," Finn shot over his shoulder. "Just not to what he should've been."

"Great. This again."

"He got distracted because the guy was hot."

"Stop it. That's complete nonsense."

"So, what you're telling me is... if I was a hot guy, I'd have my tea?" Rey teased him, crossing her arms as she watched his face redden.

"Oh come on, not you too..."

"You're getting mulch for Christmas, Poe Dameron."

"In my defense," he said, leaving the register to come place his hands warmly on her shoulders, "I immediately ordered three more boxes. When they get here, I'll place them behind the counter where they'll wait for you."

"Oh," she reached up and kissed his cheek, still disappointed but sufficiently mollified, "you're an angel, thank you. I appreciate it. But who on earth would buy my funky bourbon licorice tea?"

"Hot guys, apparently," Poe said, firing off a withering look toward his husband as he disappeared into the kitchen to start food prep.

"To be honest? Never seen the guy before," Finn told her. "But we get a lot of people we've never seen before. Most of 'em either motorcyclists or tourists, headed to Six Rivers or into the Redwoods. Could be a snipper or a transient, too."

"Don't we usually get snippers over the summer?" Rey asked, perusing the bags of flour. Snippers were typically college students looking to make quick money, flooding the area between semesters to perform manual labor snipping the buds off of marijuana plants on the regional medical supply farms. And... other, more illicit farms.

"Not all the time. But yeah, most times I guess. Had a real cute dog, though."

"What?" She whirled around, nearly dropping the two heavy bags between which she'd been currently deciding.

"Yeah, big shaggy boy. Just sat and chilled on the front steps while he was here. A real good boy."

"Was he brown? Named Chewie?"

"Uh..." Finn eyed her strangely this time, putting down the rag he was using to wipe clean a table. "I didn't catch his name. Why do you ask?"

Rey could feel her temperature rising.

"Was the guy holding a giant gun? While asking you impertinent questions about your own personal safety?"

"I can honestly say he did not bring a, uh..." Finn stated slowly and quietly, not wishing to alert the man he loved in the back, "a gun into this store. Did something happen?"

"If he's the same man, I think I met him this morning. Wandering around near my property line. With a shotgun. He told me it wasn't safe to drive the logging roads and asked me if I had a gun. Do you think he was... casing me? What does that sound like to you?"

"Hard to say. Could've just been legitimately concerned about some girl alone in the middle of the woods. Me and Poe worry about you sometimes, too - it's not outside the realm of possibility. But it could just be a coincidence, too. Might not even be the same guy."

"Do you think I should call the police?"

"Yeah, you've been here long enough to know as well as I do, the police ain't comin' up here unless someone's dead, and even then you're probably gonna have to bribe 'em."

"Yeah, but, what if this guy comes back? Do you think I should get a gun?"

It was a hard question to ask. American gun culture was still something foreign to her and something that frightened her, even given all of her time spent in the American west. And she was still only a legal resident, not yet a citizen - the methods of becoming a gun owner seemed daunting and perplexing. She didn't even know how to safely shoot or maintain a firearm.

"It's worth considering," her friend replied, having a different perspective on the matter as a military veteran. "But you know we're only a phone call away, and will be there in half an instant if you need us. If he's a bad element, though... he might attract more bad elements. It's something to think about."

Which was bad news for a lone operator trying to run a family friendly business off of the land.

"You know," Poe said, walking out from where he'd been eavesdropping, carrying a basket of eggs, "I wonder if he's the guy who bought the property just west of you? I'd heard it'd come up for sale, but the price tag on it was pretty high, and the public auction didn't go so well. I'd heard rumors it'd sold through a private realtor, but never saw any confirmation on that."

"So it's possible he could actually be my new neighbor...?"

"There's a good chance, yeah. You might be stuck with him."

Wasn't that just great. Her kind of luck. After everything she'd sacrificed to get where she was, after all the dues she'd had to pay... out of all of the fires and other acts of God she'd survived, the first time she's standing confidently on her own and carving a life for herself out of these red trees and tall rocks, something nefarious and sinister had to take up residence next door. She just couldn't seem to break even.

"Well," she said, lifting her chin and cocking her hip to the side, "if he thinks he's going to sniff around my trees with his giant gun while I've got children and families there to do legal, proper business he's got another thing coming. Maybe I just need to mark off a few boundaries with him. Maybe it's time I brought over a fresh batch of cookies and knocked on his front door to have a little... neighborly chat."

It was probably dangerous, but if the police weren't going to do something about it, then someone had to. Uncle Plutt's Greenhouse and Nursery was her livelihood and her story, and no trespassing troglodyte was going to put that in jeopardy.

Plus... she made really damned good cookies.

**Author's Note:**

> Want to thank this fic's lovely beta, Pythia - you're a doll! Also want to thank HellyJellyBean for the lovely moodboard!!! This fic was inspired by a convo on Twitter, lol, and a really great true crime docuseries on Netflix called Murder Mountain, highly recommend. This was my first foray into modern AU after I protested I would never dip a toe into this pool. I am a giant hypocrite. This fic will probably only have five chapters or so, but it's been great brain bleach during the stress leading up to TRoS.


End file.
